The New Republic

The New Republic

The New Republic

The Gun Control Fight Is a Fight For Equality

The Parkland shooting has sparked another debate about guns—a debate mistakenly siloed from other issues that contribute to deadly violence.

Kena Betancur/Getty Images

When the survivors of the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Parkland, Florida’s
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took to Florida’s
capitol in February, sparking nationwide actions in solidarity, they were echoing
the actions of an earlier group of young people protesting a shooting.

George Zimmerman’s July 13, 2013, acquittal for the killing
of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, brought the Dream Defenders, an
organization formed after Martin’s death, to the capitol to demand that legislators
take action, particularly against the state’s “Stand Your Ground” gun law.
Governor Rick Scott turned up wearing cowboy boots with Confederate flags
printed on them. He told them there was nothing he could do.

The Parkland students descended on the capitol just days
from the six-year anniversary of Martin’s death, an anniversary that also
commemorated the creation of many of the groups that have made headlines in the
years since. Black Lives Matter, Dream Defenders, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice,
BYP 100, and others were formed in the
aftermath of Martin’s death, yet are mostly separated
in the press and the political debates from the issue of “gun violence.” Their
demands are a reminder that the problem of gun-related deaths is rooted not
just in a surfeit of deadly weapons, but also in a culture of racialized
violence and inequality.

Even if the students in Florida do not think of their
movements as the same, they are doubtless learning from the years of movement
activity that they have lived through. Just in high schools in recent years, we
have seen walkouts over Trump’s election;
over deportations;
in support of striking teachers’
unions and to save public
schools slated for closure
or budget cuts; in support of Occupy Wall Street; against police
violence; and, yes, calling for justice for
Trayvon. This is the world in which the Parkland students
were shaped, and it should be no surprise that they have a toolbox of
tactics, including social media, that they are using to bring attention to
their cause. “Adults like us when we have strong test scores, but they hate us when we have strong opinions.”wroteParkland survivor and organizer Emma Gonzalez.

It shouldn’t surprise us either that they appear to be getting
results. Recent years have brought us a burgeoning awareness of
American inequality, of the failures of quick fixes, and of the increasing
dysfunction of our political institutions. Mass shootings feel like a
particularly brutal symptom
of America’s brokenness, one that manages to penetrate even into the lives of
the comfortable. They react to mass shootings—the really bad ones, anyway—the
way they don’t react to the fact that Flint still doesn’t
have clean water.

“Every tragedy is worth fighting for and organizing around,
regardless if it is a mass shooting or everyday violence that happens in a
certain community,” says Dante Barry of Million Hoodies. “While people continue
to organize in Florida, the most impacted communities have been leading these
fights for a very long time and we need to think about how we can be in
solidarity with those movements.”

Million Hoodies began with an online call to action. From
there it became a march and an online petition that, Barry notes, got global
support. “From then on, there has always been general global support for
black-led movements, but there hasn’t been a lot of capital raised for
black-led movements,” he says. “We are literally fighting for crumbs just to do
any bit of work on things that have been devastating our communities for a
very, very long time.”

By now many people
have rightly noted
the difference between the reactions to the Parkland students and to the
movement for black lives. Though the NRA and hardline conservatives react badly
to both—accusing them of being crisis actors
in the case of the Parkland students, and of being violent enemies in the case
of black-led movements—the Valentine’s Day shooting survivors have been
welcomed with open arms (and open wallets) in the center and much of the
left. It’s not that the students of Parkland are all white and well-off—they aren’t,
not even the most-photographed, like Gonzalez. But the kernel of truth in the
conspiracy theories about shadowy funders supporting the Parkland students is
that there is some big money
behind gun control, wealthy backers like billionaire former New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg.

On the national level, meanwhile, there is a disconnect between policy advocacy
and the needs of people on the ground. Some proposals being put forward would
criminalize black and brown people or increase inequality, producing safety for
some at the expense of others. Barry points to the last big showdown in Congress
over gun control, which saw progressive
stalwarts sitting in to demand a vote on legislation that
would bar people on the “no-fly”
terrorism watchlist from buying guns. Yet that “no-fly” list is a
deeply flawed document that has long been criticized as a
form of racial profiling.
Background checks, too, rely on a criminal justice system that is lenient on
the white and wealthy and harsher on everyone else.

Gun control is mostly discussed as though there are
commonsense solutions that politicians, aswim in NRA cash like Scrooge McDuck,
simply refuse to enact. Yet “gun control” in Mayor Bloomberg’s New York meant
stopping and frisking young men who look like Trayvon Martin. Stop-and-frisk
rarely found weapons, but it did subject hundreds of thousands of young people to
humiliation and violence. Furthermore, the NRA has power not simply because it
has money, but because it has a
base, which is mostly white and practices the grievance
politics that helped Trump get elected.

The organizations formed after Trayvon Martin’s death do not
advocate for quick-fix solutions. They are part of a movement to end
inequality, a movement that understands that stricter gun laws will not end the
violence of racism and poverty in America. This is what their critics really
mean when they say, “They have no demands.”
They have demands, it is just
that those demands are huge and systemic and will require change from us all.
Those demands cannot be met in the space of a legislative session, though
certainly legislators can do more than voting to put guns
in the hands of teachers.

“We live in this society that is highly unstable, there’s so
much insecurity,” says Ciara Taylor,
one of those who occupied the Florida capitol in 2013 to protest George Zimmerman’s
acquittal. “Parents aren’t sure if they’re going to have enough food on the
table, children are feeling insecurity in schools that are like prisons, with
metal detectors, armed security that didn’t even protect the children. You fear
being detained and incarcerated in your own classroom, fear walking down the
block in your own neighborhood—Trayvon was killed in his own community.”

So far, the Parkland students have at least resisted demands
that would make schools more prisonlike. They have shrugged off demands for
more metal detectors
and guns for teachers even as the Florida legislature voted to fund and arm “school marshals.”
Teachers responded with the hashtag #ArmMeWith,
listing the things that they need on the job more than a gun: more counselors,
more teachers, more teaching rather than testing, and most of all more funding.
The Florida legislature instead tried to break the teacher’s union just days
after its members died protecting
students. There is money, apparently, to arm teachers but not to pay them a
decent wage.

More armed guards in schools is an idea likely to result in safety for
some at the expense of others, especially students of color.
The presence of police in schools makes students more likely
to get arrested for things that would have been considered
discipline issues. And teachers could also be put at risk with more guns in
schools. As the mother of Philando Castile, the Minnesota school worker shot by
a police officer after he mentioned having a legal gun, noted:
“If you have three words—black, man, gun—there are no negotiations. They could
be killed when all they wanted to do was protect their students.”

To really lessen the violence that Americans, students and
otherwise, face will require broad changes and an attention to existing
inequalities and injustices. “I’ve come to understand the larger problem to be
our culture of violence, of exploitation, of dominance, of hatred and fear of
the Other and I think that a lot of that boils down to this system of
racialized capitalism,” Taylor says. “Until we address how that system has
pervaded our community and marginalized segments of our communities we’re never
going to be able to get violence out of our communities in a real way.”

There are signs that the Parkland students understand this. Gonzalez
called for increased mental health care in an op-ed, and other students have
retweeted calls for attention to Flint and to Puerto Rico, making connections
with the Dream Defenders and other grassroots groups. But the sudden national
attention on one group of activists can lead to resources being diverted away
from grassroots work that has made important strides.
“People should be putting in resources, time, and really listening to
particularly black-led organizations that are not just focused around gun
violence or violence prevention, but also look at policing, economic
development, health care, housing, and all of the other things that actually
widen the level of inequality for our communities,” Barry says.

On Monday night, the New York City chapter of Million
Hoodies took the streets again to remember Trayvon Martin and to highlight the
connections between police violence, criminalization, and gun violence. They
launched a campaign on February 5 called “Life at 23,” sharing what their life
was like at the age Martin would be now, or, if they’re younger, their expectations for what it will
be like. It did not get the press attention that the Parkland students have
gotten, but it is a campaign they would likely understand—they too had cause to
wonder if they’d make it to 23.

“We have to have these overlapping conversations around gun
violence, whether it’s in mass violence like this, peer to peer in our
communities, or gun violence happening as a result of the criminalization of
young people, poor people, people of color,” Taylor says. To the young
activists working now, she advises, “Continue to ask the question: Why? Why are
things the way that they are? Why do we have a system that values profits over
people so much that our country is willing to continue unrestricted access to
guns?”